Tag: neoliberalism

In a recent <a href=" interview, President Obama was asked about his views on political correctness, and whether President-elect Trump was right to say that political correctness has gone too far. In typical fashion, Obama offered an insightful yet measured response about the different definitions of “political correctness”, and the dangers of subscribing too fervently to an extreme interpretation of what it means to be PC. On one hand, you have the definition of PC as simply being polite and respectful towards other people. On the other hand, there’s the definition of PC as “hypersensitivity that ends up resulting in people not being able to express their opinions at all without someone suggesting they're a victim”. We often associate the discussion about PC culture with the USA, but, as highlighted by the ongoing Amos Yee debacle, the PC problem might be a lot closer to home than we think. To many, the actions of Mr. Yee, who is currently making <a href=" news for seeking asylum in the US, are unforgivable and absolutely worthy of punishment. To others, however, the continued persecution of Mr. Yee remains an embarrassing stain on Singapore’s hypersensitive culture, hopelessly mired in the trappings of being overly PC. I have to admit, I’m torn on this. Mr. Yee, while offering some much-needed challenges to our fragile sensitivities, also took a giant dump on every aspect of being PC, including the one about being a respectful, polite human being. Herein, I believe, lies the problem with Mr. Yee’s narrative; he simply took it too far. Unfortunately, however, so did we. We, as a society too concerned about being PC, put a teenager in prison for “hurting our feelings”. A bratty, disrespectful, annoying little shit of a teenager, yes, but a criminal? It’s embarrassing, no matter how you spin it. Why are we so beholden to the tenets of the overly PC tribe? I believe the answer lies in a socioeconomic ideology called neoliberalism. We’ve talked about neoliberalism before, but the big N word (not that one!) is back to haunt us once again. In a nutshell, neoliberalism is the laissez faire approach of allowing the free market to sort everything out. In the neoliberal economy, everything is angled towards making money, everything, including political correctness. This particularly clever line from South Park perfectly sums up PC culture: “What is PC but a verbal form of gentrification? Spruce everything up, get rid of all the ugliness, in order to create a false sense of paradise.” Like urban developers sprucing everything up in run-down areas with overpriced cafés and organic farmers’ markets without addressing the underlying poverty of said areas, PC culture provides a paint job of pleasantness over the undercurrents of society’s problems. The spectacle of inclusion and tolerance is good for business. Economically, it’s beneficial for a society to offer the appearance of harmony, even if such surface-level PC does nothing to address underlying problems of intolerance. Do investors and tourists care about the deep-seated segregation between cultures in Singapore? No. They only see the tourist brochure version of a cultural melting pot with an apparently stable and harmonious populace. Are we really helping to further understanding between Christianity and Islam in Singapore by persecuting someone mocking religion, crass and disrespectful as he may be, or are we simply deepening rifts between groups and stifling meaningful communication by putting band-aids over fractures and making everyone afraid to discuss religion outside of their own? In an <a href=" with BigThink about PC, Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek describes PC culture as an implicit form of totalitarianism. He of course doesn’t believe that we should be going around verbally abusing people, but he argues that we shouldn’t employ “coercion and scare tactics to instil a state of forced behaviour.” Žižek believes that the kinds of obscenities and irreverence that PC tries to censor – the same kinds that we persecuted Amos Yee for – are actually important to “breeding a sense of shared solidarity”. By taking our sensibilities less seriously, Žižek says, we allow ourselves to more easily find common ground with those whose beliefs diverge wildly from our own. Perhaps, in order to grow together as a community, we should reject the tendency to get offended by anything we disagree with, and have the maturity to engage in contentious but fruitful conversation with people we’d much rather silence. To end this conversation on PC culture, I’ll leave you with this quote from comedian Stephen Fry: “It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so f*cking what."

https://www.facebook.com/Urbanites.co/posts/1784695275113104

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“Mankind does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that.” - Friedrich Nietzsche Someone recently asked me, “What do you really want from your life?” I said, “To be happy.” But even as the words came out of my mouth, I felt like I was copping out. What kind of a bullshit non-answer is that? Of course, everyone wants to be happy, but do we know how? Or why? No matter which angle you look at it from, modern 21st Century society seems possessed by an underlying obsession with happiness. We see it in every facet of our lives, from work, to healthcare, to literature, to art. An array of doctors, psychiatrists, HR managers, and self-help “gurus” constantly stand at the ready to ensure our continued happiness, and prescribe all manner of drugs, counselling, vacations, and motivational texts to correct any deviation from the set path of bliss. The happiness mandate permeates our culture in ways we simply cannot escape. But, why? Why are we so obsessed with being happy, and could our obsession actually be harmful?

NEITHER NEW NOR LIBERAL

The root of compulsory happiness lies in a socioeconomic ideology known as neoliberalism. Put simply, neoliberalism is the idea that the economy should be free from government restrictions, and that people should have the individual freedom to purchase or sell whatever they desire on the free market by way of demand and supply. Put very simply – imagine the younger, rebellious cousin of capitalism, who hates rules and just wants to be free. In a neoliberal economy, anything can be monetized. Regardless of whether consumers are paying for booze, clothes, food, or even sex (which is legal in Singapore), the neoliberal economy runs on one common commodity: happiness, or, each individual’s personal idea of happiness. “If it makes you happy, you can buy it,” says the neoliberal. Don’t know what makes you happy? Don’t worry, let advertising tell you. Of course, there isn’t any country in the world whose government subscribes fully to the neoliberal model, but its principles of individual freedom and free market consumerism apply to every capitalistic economy in the world, including those that pretend to still be communist *cough* China *cough*. As neoliberalism peddles happiness to the people that consist the economy, it also relies on happiness to survive. It is a known fact in economics that happy people spend more money. They go to restaurants, clubs, theme parks, and shopping malls more often, and spend proportionately more. The “work hard, play hard” adage is the mantra of the neoliberal economy, which espouses making more money and spending more money to feed into the wheel of peddled happiness that drives our society. Is this all wrong? I don’t know. Maybe this is how society is supposed to work. Or maybe we’re all just overconsuming on an endless happiness treadmill until we get numb from our blessings and constantly stay unsatisfied until we fall off. I can tell you how it is, but I can’t tell you how it should be.

EQUALITY OF EMOTIONS

If human emotions were J.K. Rowling characters, happiness would be Harry Potter. Everything revolves around that kid; it’s annoying. We constantly glorify happiness, while vilifying the other emotions of the spectrum, classifying them as “disorders” that need to be dealt with. Jimmy’s always sad? He suffers from depression. Jane gets angry at the slightest thing? She has anger management issues. Johnny’s deathly afraid of that one thing? He’s got a phobia. How about Phoebe, who’s constantly smiling and cheerful all the time? Oh, she just has a really fun, bubbly personality. Isn’t she lovable? There is a popular misconception that emotions somehow conflict with logical reasoning; the battle between the heart and mind, as some would conceptualize it. This could not be further from the truth. Modern scientists believe that emotions are tools that our brains use to organize and expedite rational thinking. Every emotion has a crucial function, not just happiness. If they didn’t, our brains wouldn’t have evolved them in the first place! Happiness acts as a sort of positive feedback mechanism, as in, “This is good for you, keep doing that.” Anger allows us to perceive injustice and wrongdoing more acutely, and respond in kind, as in, “That guy just tried to steal my goat and burn down my farm. I probably shouldn’t let him get away scot-free.” Sadness, as an inverse of happiness, acts as a negative feedback mechanism, saying, “This is bad, don’t let it happen again.” Fear helps to keep us alive, as in, “Don’t poke that venomous snake with your fat sausage fingers, you dumb buffoon.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m not glorifying or trivializing conditions like depression and anxiety. These are problems that must be addressed, but demonizing and rejecting their underlying emotions while exalting happiness above all is equally dangerous. What advice do we normally give to people who are depressed or angry? We say, “cheer up, buddy”, “take it easy”, “stay positive”. Simply telling someone to ignore their other emotions and just “be happy” is terrible advice. It promotes the notion that happiness is only in someone’s head, that it’s a personal responsibility that others can wash their hands off. Our collective obsession with personal inner happiness can cause us to ignore valid grievances, enable exploitation, and tolerate external injustice that shouldn’t be tolerated at all.

EVERY EMOTION HAS ITS DAY

While all-pervasive in our neoliberal-capitalist society, our compulsive desire for happiness might paradoxically be pushing us away from really being happy. We pursue economically-serving surrogates for happiness like overpriced bags and cars that let us pretend we’re happy, while setting us on a downward spiral towards depression as we chase mandatory happiness in the face of ignored hardship, and repeatedly find ourselves falling short. We ask ourselves, “Why am I not good enough to get that raise?” or, “How can Suzanne afford that Louis Vuitton bag when I cannot?” Perhaps, a healthy mental state requires embracing all our emotions to build a more robust sense of harmony and inner peace, where we can be truly happy with who we are, because the pursuit of happiness can only be healthy when balanced and grounded with its accompanying emotions. Or maybe, the neoliberals had it right all along, and running endlessly on the happiness treadmill is truly the meaning of life. What do you think?